The need for mobile apps for businesses is much more than maintaining an online presence. It is a source to generate massive revenues, expanding the customer base, generating new business prospects, reinforcing brand image, etc. Everybody has something to offer and thus, in such a dog-fight, it is extremely necessary for businesses to lure customers in different ways to ensure their retention and loyalty towards their service and brand. When the user is concerned, it is not the technicality of the app that counts. It is the features and the interface of the app that makes the difference to the user, which decides its fate and in turn the fate of the company. Thus, it is important that user engagement should be given top most priority and with this mindset, the UI/UX of the app should be designed so that the user never feels the need to opt for another app. Let’s delve into the basics of UI/UX of mobile apps and how it helps in customer retention.

What is UI? : A User Interface (UI) is the space where a human and a machine interacts with each other. The medium of interaction depends on the environment that constitutes the individual and the machine. When mobile phones and humans interact with each other, the interaction takes place through a Graphical User Interface (GUI). The GUI is not restricted only to the tabs and navigation menu in an app. In fact, the entire functioning of the app depends upon it.

What is UX? : A User Experience (UX), as the name suggests, is the experience a user has while using the app. Their emotions and behavior when using the app account for this. It comprises of pragmatic, worthy, meaningful facets of human – mobile app interaction. A flawless UX guarantees the return and loyalty of a consumer. Developing UX of an app involves a lot of research, analysis of user behavior, a rock solid planning and many other things.

Now that we have a brief idea about what a UI/UX is, let’s discuss some of its vital components below.

Usual Suspects: The most basic requirements to make an app appealing, is the use of understandable or at least familiar symbols, icons, tabs, etc. This makes the user feel at home and familiar with functionalities of those elements. The colour schemes and themes for the app should not repel the user. For instance, a smooth and bright colour scheme makes the user happy. Also, whilst these things are paid attention to, users should also be given the freedom to customize the look of the app according to their will and mood. This makes the user feel special.

Keep The Confusions At Bay: While creating an app, the prime focus should be on the simplicity of the design. An app’s UI should be self-explanatory and just in case your app is overloaded with features, make sure to include a small app tour in the beginning. This makes users familiar with your app and enables them to use its functions and features with ease.

Lags & Jitters Are For Losers: The last thing an app’s UI should do is to bog down the speed of the user’s device. A user would opt for anything but, an app that slows down or freezes his device. To ensure a faster UI, the app should shed excess load. The smaller the size of the app, the faster it is. It should also be duly noted that the app should be swift when working online. An app that takes time load even when the device has access to a fast internet connection, has some defects and needs to be checked and corrected on a priority basis.

Consistency:An app should maintain its consistency when the user navigates from one page to another. The layout should almost replicate itself so that a user doesn’t encounter a major change. It makes the user familiar with new pages of the app and helps him in efficiently navigating through the app and the new functions that he comes across.

Conclusion: UI is what a user first comes across, and his return and loyalty to your app and brand depends entirely upon his experience and interaction with the app. It is important for businesses to preserve and expand their customer base and although, technical aspects are important, the UI/UX of the app can’t be ignored as that is the driving force for customer retention.

About Techugo: We’re a mobile app development companyand we develop mobile apps for businesses customized to their needs. We realize that UI/UX forms an essential component of the mobile app development process and hence, our development process especially focuses on the look and feel of the app apart from the technical specification to provide users with an overall satisfying experience.

There are plenty of mobile apps available on app stores. They are all made to fulfill a purpose and meet human needs. The idea behind mobile apps is always to simplify the complications of human life and assist them in the best way possible while having the user engaged. But, are all the apps successful in realizing this goal? The answer is a big NO. Not every app finds its way onto the device of the user and there could be many reasons for that. One of the reasons for an app not being successful is losing out to their competitors in the fierce battle to entice and lure users to become a prospect customer. The other important reasons could be the faults in the app. Let’s discuss a few of those features in detail and how to avoid the shortcomings of a mobile app with Techugo, a top mobile app development company in Dubai.

Simple & Easy To Use: As discussed earlier, an essential role that an app plays is to ease the complications and basic struggles of everyday life and hence, your app needs to be simple and easy to use with little to no complex functions. An app that is complicated and can have the user easily confused is of no use to the user and would end up getting uninstalled almost immediately after the download. To make sure that users use your app, a smooth design and simple layout are required to be defined during the mobile app development process. The navigation within the app should be uncomplicated and the app should serve the purpose it is meant for. If your app has minimal and simplistic features, a user is more likely to be drawn towards it and use it.

Performance Shouldn’t Be Sidelined: Often times while developing the app, the performance aspect of the app on the device is overlooked. Remember, a user would never opt for an app that slows down the speed of his device. A user would always want his device to function smoothly while using the app. Therefore, the size of the app should be as low as possible so that it doesn’t occupy much space on the device and the processing capabilities of the app don’t overheat or freeze the device. The app shouldn’t consume too much power of the device and the response of the app on the device should be as quick as possible. Additionally, an app shouldn’t take quite a lot of time to boot up and should be lightning fast when making use of the internet connection. An optimized app with all the performance glitches perfectly worked upon during the app development process, would end up winning the heart of the user and will definitely find a place on the device of the user.

Security Should Be Tight: A user’s primary concern is that the privacy of his data isn’t breached. An app utilizes quite an amount of a user’s permissions to access vital information on the device and his personal data to customize things to his liking. Therefore, it becomes necessary for the app to preserve these vital statistics gathered from the user and hence, the security should not be overlooked. An app’s security should be as robust as a concrete wall of a prison. Stringent measures should be taken to avert any kind of data theft or phishing attempts that puts users’ data at risk or exposed. If an app fails to meet the security requirements, a user will never go for that app.

Online/Offline Usability: Apps come with an assurance of simplifying and streamlining a user’s life or to keep him engaged or entertained. Hence, the app needs to be usable at all times, irrespective of the circumstances. An app shouldn’t be developed only keeping in mind the online usability. Albeit minimum, an app should be able to work offline also. An app for which a user finds usability in both the environments is a sure shot.

App Updates: To compete against your competitors and assume the throne of domination and access to consumers, the app needs to meet certain standards and specifications that keep on changing all the time. Accordingly, to meet the standards and changing demand, the app needs to be updated constantly. New features and adaptability to new environments should be released with every app update and the app updates should be planned in advance. This an app development process that’s never ending until the app is decommissioned. Regular app updates also help in removing glitches or unnecessary features of the app and thus, help in the smooth functioning of the app.

Communication Channel: An app helps an organization to bring it closer to its consumers. The bridging of the gap helps the organization in understanding its consumers better and enables it to assist them and address them conveniently and efficiently. The organization can work on the feedback of the customers to fine tune its app according to the consumers’ need. Moreover, this communication channel can also be used as an advertisement and marketing tool to promote your products/services and introduce new products.

Freedom To Personalize: Humans love it when they are paid heed to and made to feel special. With an app, one has the opportunity to allure their users by giving them access to app personalization according to their taste and likeness. You can let the users set the theme according to their taste, change the color and background of the app, the appearance, use their own photos to customize the app, etc. These functionalities can be easily realized in the app development phase and is a Mantra of surefire success.

Analytics Integration:In order to serve your customers to their level of expectation, it is increasingly important that you track the user behavior, the reaction, the demography, the usage stats and many other things. This can easily be achieved with the use of analytical tools that are available to track such crucial insights about users and help in tuning the app better.

Amalgamation Of Social Media: In this digitized world, everybody likes to make a statement and address their presence. Social Media has set the stage for that and has made it available to everyone. People love to share their achievements, happiness on the platform. Rather, to put it more aptly, people love to share their emotions. Hence, to expand your user base, it is essential that the app has a feature to make postings on social media platforms and enable users to do it easily. The feature can be added while the mobile app is in the development phase.

Cover As Much Ground As Possible: Since the arrival of smartphones, the world has been majorly split into two halves. iOS& Android. Both the platforms have their own set of unique features and resonate with users in their own style. Both are exceptional in their own league and have a huge following. Thus, to expand your consumer base and the use of your mobile app, it is necessary that you don’t pick a side and develop an app that’s compatible with both the platforms to maximize your user base and profits.

Conclusion: It is not rocket science to build a mobile app that grabs the attention of the users and serve their purpose spot on. All it requires is proper planning during the development stage and efficient execution of those plans. A mobile app development company that provides app development services along with marketing and promotion strategies for your app, can do the job for you.

About Techugo: We’re top mobile app development company in uaeand we thrive on excellence. This is what makes us different from our competitors. We have the knowledge and expertise in the field of mobile app development and the marketing strategies, but most importantly, we have the experience of utilizing these skills to develop a robust app that makes the user happy and reap profits for the organization. For more details visit www.techugo.com

Yoga is practiced successfully all over the globe, people opt to do Yoga for various reasons, for some it is a de-stressing exercise, for some it’s a door to spiritual bond and for some it’s a mode to fight the deadly diseases, the reasons are endless, but the aim is same to garner positive emotions and relaxation of soul, mind, and body. The International Yoga Day is celebrated to spread the awareness of Yoga benefits for stress relief, health, and physical fitness, so on this gracious occasion of #IYD2017, Techugo team is highly proud to announce a mobile app for Yoga, which will be available soon on app stores.

Ever since its inception, both the iOS & Android OS have come a long way. We’ve seen newer and more refined versions of the OS with the inclusion of new features. Every successive version has something better to offer than the previous one. Also, a new software version enhances the performance of the device to a great extent. But, it shouldn’t only be the OS that should be updated periodically. The apps should also be updated along with the OS since each OS update carries its own set of functionalities and the apps need to be optimized according to it. Additionally, an app should also be updated periodically to improve its own features and performance. Let’s learn why your app needs to be updated and optimized periodically with Techugo, a mobile application development company in uae.

Keeping the customers happy and engaged: An upbeat customer would always be happy with what you’ve to offer and would be loyal to your services. But, the question is how to maintain the level of interest of your customers? The answer lies in the update of your app. An app that gets updated at regular intervals has the attention of the consumers. Furthermore, an update helps keep the app functionalities and performance up to date and removes the glitches experienced in the previous version. With every subsequent update, the app developers can introduce a new feature in the app that was missing previously and was requested by the users. This practice helps in winning the confidence and loyalty of the users and also keep them engaged with your app. On the other hand, if an app has jitters and flaws, and is also not updated regularly, the users would end up uninstalling such an app and would look out for better options.

Smacking the bug: It is natural for apps to encounter bugs in the codes or in the UI. Bugs in the app don’t affect the appearance of the app, but, hamper the performance of the app to a great extent. Frequent app crashes, app not booting up, app getting hanged, device getting frozen, etc. are all examples of bugs in the app and need to be addressed asap for smooth functioning of the app. A user would never use an app that slows down the performance and the speed of his device, frequently crashes, freezes the device. With proper app updates and bug fixes, these things can be avoided and the app could be optimized for better performance. The developers should work towards shooting down multiple bug fixes at once. This practice allows developers to avoid multiple update roll outs every now and then and also spares the user from having to download the updates frequently.

Refurbishing the UI/UX: We’ve always emphasized on the fact that UI/UX is what forms a driving force for your app’s success. It is the UI/UX on which a user forms an opinion and has a point of view for the app. It is the UI with which he interacts and therefore, it should not ever get boring. A mundane, uninteresting UI can lead to the uninstalls of the app. Hence, it is always necessary that the UI of the app is constantly refreshed and updated so that the user doesn’t lose interest in the app. It should also be kept in mind that only adding features to the app is not the sole aim of the update. An update can also occur to remove an unwanted feature from the app that previously existed in it and was disliked by the users and/or the feature introduced in the previous version was futile. Features should be added or removed depending on the functionality and performance of the app.

App update vs new app:It’s always a debacle for developers,whether to opt for an app update, or go for a new app entirely. There are positives and negatives attached to both the options available. Let’s look at them closely.

When opting for a new app: If the developers go for a new app instead of updating the old one, the users won’t have to go through the process of downloading the app update and it would be entirely at their discretion if they want to download the new app at all or not. Furthermore, developers can generate revenue from their new app. However, the flip side to this is that the new app would have to be promoted and the promotional tactics would have to be applied from the very beginning. Also, the user might not want to opt for the new app.

When opting for the app update: Choosing this option over a new app would not compel the users to pay for the upgrade and the promotions for the update would be in order and accordance of the app. The flip side of this is that users would have to be forced to update the version of the app which they might not want to or their device might not be compatible with the new app update and the developers have to look for resources to replenish the funds required for the update of the app.

Developers generally roll out updates for the app rather than opting for new apps entirely. But, occasionally, a few developers have rolled out a new app with upgraded features and have seen the app become a success.

App Promotion: App updates provide developers with the option to covertly promote their app. An app that receives updates frequently, usually stays on top of the list in the available updates section and remains visible to users most of the times. This constantly reminds the users of the app’s presence and hence, your app stays on the device while performing at par because of the constant updates. It is also proven that an app that’s frequently updated resonates with the users and is more preferred by them over others.

A user is always on the lookout for a perfect and flawless app. All he wants is performance and an elated UX. All these features collectively can help deliver the best app one asks for.

Entrepreneurship isn’t an easy deal. It’s a challenging task, but, it has its own set of advantages too. Entrepreneurship gives you a sense self-entitlement and leadership. You get to be your own boss and gain experience of managing people. However, a few important qualities that an entrepreneur should possess, is that of time management, interpersonal skills, people management skills, etc. If an entrepreneur knows how to effectively manage all these skills for his activities, he becomes unstoppable. Let’s learn what makes a great entrepreneur and how to polish the entrepreneurship skills and ascend with it to the next level with Techugo, a top mobile app development company.

Speed Up Your Tasks With Technology: An entrepreneur’s life is surrounded by many daunting tasks, most of which involves a lot of communication; and as we have established above that time-management is a skill that an entrepreneur should possess as it is the most valuable entity, therefore, to save time, technology should be used effectively. There are many apps out there that can help with time management efficiently and thus, help in saving time for the entrepreneur to invest in something more useful.

Disintegrate Your Problems: It is all a game of perspective. How you look at things. A successful entrepreneur identifies smaller problems that have collectively taken a huge shape. He then prioritizes these problems and acts on them accordingly. The problem that needs attention first is sorted on a priority basis and subsequently, we go down the order.

Work towards Creating an Opportunity: A successful entrepreneur is the one who doesn’t wait for instructions to follow, or who doesn’t wait for an opportunity to knock on his door. An entrepreneur should be proactive in creating an opportunity for him by studying the market trends, affinity of people towards certain things, etc. If you already have a product in the market, don’t wait for people to come to you. Be upfront and seek their feedback. Improvise on the shortcomings with the reviews you’ve garnered. This will take your business a long way.

Be Meticulous: No matter what you do, if you’ve put your hands into it, give it your best shot. Pay attention to every detail. Work towards creating a better product. Heed to your company’s reputation in the market. Constantly brainstorm on how you can uplift the image and make it better with each passing day. In the end, it’s the brand and the image, consumers relate to.

Learn from Your & Others’ Mistakes: A lot of entrepreneurs begin to think they’re invincible and can’t be touched until reality hits them in the face. Being confident is good, but, overconfidence is always harmful. Look around for mistakes people have committed or take a look at your own mistakes in the past, analyze where they’ve landed them or you, and rectify the errors and prevent it from happening again. A mistake might be small but can incur a lot of damage to the image of the company.

Define You Work Hours: Many entrepreneurs prefer to work at night. Reason? It’s calm, quiet, and possibly a time where a lot less people and distractions are around to sway you away from your work. It could be in the morning too, but, what’s essential here is to identify your most productive hour.

Conclusion: It is easy to become an entrepreneur, but it requires extreme effort and religiousness to become a leader. A leader is nothing but a skilled and polished entrepreneur, who takes calculated risks without any sense of fear and drive himself with others to success. Following the points mentioned above can improve the entrepreneurship skills and will help you take a step ahead in the direction of becoming a leader and achieving success.

There has already been written much about what to ask your developer before planning for an app, but internet shares a very limited space with the questions to be asked from your client. Yes, it is true, as an app developer, you also have the viable prerogative to query your clients, to satiate your understanding of the mobile app development process. The queries are many on the technical front, but today we are not going to take a dip into the technical perspective merely, since the technical approach and demand for every mobile app varies from one to another, on the contrary, we shall discuss the generic questions to be asked from your client to get a better hold on the app concept.

Why To Ask Your Client

If a project is started to meet the level of your expectations as a client, then you need to gear up to the questions raised by your app developers to gain a fruitful product in the form of a mobile app. The calculation is very simple; if you need a perfect mobile app for your business, then you need a platform filled with inquisitive souls who can mold the app development as per your requirement and concept bearing, but it can only be achieved if there is a valid and logical set of queries raised from both the ends. The series of pertinent questions here goes following, go ahead:

Why This App Is Getting Built

You don’t need to jump on the gun, after getting a lead from your marketing channel, rather you need to engross in various points to understand the mobile app concept and the reason for its development. Ask your client, the main motive behind developing the mobile app, whether is it an enterprise mobile to increase the workforce efficiency or is it an eCommerce mobile app to boost the sales process. If you feel this question set is futile enough to give you a clear indication of the app development process, then you are certainly wrong, because these questions would help you build an efficient wall of required features and functionalities, needed to develop that mobile app, which runs seamlessly.

Know The Targeted Users

The subsequent question after the previous question is to know the targeted users for the mobile app. You need to research and understand that which purpose the mobile app will solve for the users, how it will help. The targeted users have to be searched on a wider scale, like what is their need, which mobile platform they use, this complete set of information help you understand and know more about your targeted users and what actually the need to make your mobile app a successful product.

Can We Know Your Budget

No, you don’t sound pushy with this question, it is a common myth to not to indulge into monetary aspect, and certainly does not imply well with mobile app development process because there is technology involved. The monetary part is not discussed for any sort of negotiation from either end, but to know what your client wants and what his limitations are, maybe there are certain features required by the client’s end, which can spike up the budget, so it’s always better to have a clear understanding of the budget range. I understand mobile app development is a serious game to handle with care, which involves an ocean of unpredictable expenses to be involved with, the only sigh of relief you could get is from an estimated budget. The budget estimation from your client’s end speak a big deal, you need to ask them for a range in which they want their desired concept to take shape, for a new client this question works as one of the essentials, since if the client does not divulge the range, it is a clear sign that the project is not a serious boat to sail, rather just a vague idea of a client who is killing the time with you. The budget range would help you to decide on the cost involved in the initial build and get an awesome app that would get better and better.

Know The Key Individuals

A very common advice to all app developers out there, KNOW who you are working with? Who is the driving element behind the project, means who gives consent for every aspect? Who is the budget holder? Who is the Project Owner? Who makes the final call on the decision and very importantly; you need to know the concerned person who would be consulted at what stage to move from Ideation to prototype, to build, to test, to release. These all points if decided and discussed beforehand with your client can crack a major deal without creating any fuss about anything.

Who Are The Competitors

To know about the competitors, does not yell out, that you are gonna have every single feature ‘Cut-Copy-Paste’ option, on the contrary, it does not support the plagiarism, since once you know what is already being sold in the market, should not be repeated within your mobile app, so know your competitors and learn what you should not do and what functionality can influence your app features as well. After a complete research, you can discuss with your client and share your views on the mobile app development process.

You need to follow these question strategy quite religiously and ask your clients from the basic phase of mobile app development. It might sound a little harsh to some of you to bash your clients with these many questions at an initial phase, but trust me; this strategy will help you emerge as a promising mobile app development company, which does not negotiate for anything less than perfect. At Techugo, the same strategy is integrated and interwoven into the fabric of app development process for every client and it is followed by every single employee involved in the process of app development, whether it is an Android app development process or an iPhone app development process, but the strategy remains the same. At Techugo, we take pride in developing the mobile apps for the leading brands to startups and our mobile app development team has the expertise to create a unique variety of mobile app solution for your business needs, which would help you to showcase your idea, goal, and dream in the most informative and engaging way. Our team of top mobile app designers is here to help assist you with every step of your mobile app development strategy. We consult, brainstorm, manage the project, design, develop, test, launch, and market apps in the best possible way. You can get in touch with our team to discuss further your concept to bring into reality. The discussion would help you to gain a better insight of your app requirement.

We all are surrounded by the mobile apps and technology is used highly in every aspect in our vicinity. Now the level of mobile app revolution has reached to the level where it is beyond the reach of desertion. Albeit, there are various reasons to pick the mobile app revolution, but due to the instant hike in the mobile users, it has increased the demand of mobile apps to be adopted by every industry and domain. Mobile apps are useful not only for the users, but for the business owners too, because it has shrunk the world to an accessible axis where anybody at any point of time can enjoy the freedom of accessing the required information or services.

Mobile Apps Make The Business Accessible

It is not easy for any business owner to work 24/7, apart from some exceptional cases, but on the regular basis, it turns out to be a hard task to accomplish and even you can’t access the global customers from your brick and mortar business premise. Mobile apps are adopted smartly by every industry across the globe, and people buy the products, regardless of their time-zone, language barrier or distance. Mobile apps have brought every product at our fingertips, where we can make a purchase with a convenience of time & place. Your business gets accessed by all across the globe and they can make an instant purchase.

Opens A New Window of Opportunities

In the era of competition, it gets a rat-race to compete with other business. Websites are used quite lesser being compared with the dedicated mobile apps for your product, so the regular traffic on mobile app helps you to understand the customer behavior, also the review/feedback/ rating system helps you to improve your product or fix the product issue, according to your customer’s requirement. Mobile app analytics help you to identify the positive and negative indicators, so you can fix them in-time to avoid losing your customer and you would also receive an expanded window of opportunity to attach new customers to your revenue basket.

At Techugo, we take pride in developing the mobile apps for the leading brands to startups and our mobile app development team has the expertise to create a unique variety of mobile app solution for your business needs, which would help you to showcase your idea, goal and dream in the most informative and engaging way. Our team of top mobile app designers is here to help assist you with every step of your mobile app development strategy. We consult, brainstorm, manage the project, design, develop, test, launch, and market apps in the best possible way. You can get in touch with our team to discuss further your concept to bring into reality. The discussion would help you to gain a better insight of your app requirement.

Every industry wants to adopt the mobile app revolution to boost their business revenue, but get confused with the app development process of native or hybrid mobile apps. This blog is dedicated to the hybrid mobile app development and the benefits associated with this app development platform.

What is Hybrid Mobile App

A hybrid application (hybrid app) is one that combines elements of both native and Web applications. To discuss the technical aspect of Hybrid mobile apps, these are designed with a combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It is accessible due to the combined elements of native and web and due to this feature, Hybrid app can be easily deployed across multiple platforms.

Why To Choose Hybrid App

Reduced cost of development across multiple platforms

Retain full use of device features

Easy maintenance

Offline working

Access to device data

Mobile marketing has become a vital part of any marketing strategy. The hybrid app comes with many benefits but has its own set of limitations as well, despite it covers certain challenges, on-going development in the technology is coming up with solutions to overcome them. At Techugo, we take pride in developing the hybrid mobile apps for the leading brands to startups and our mobile app development team has the expertise to create a unique variety of mobile app solution for your business needs, which would help you to showcase your idea, goal, and dream in the most informative and engaging way. Our team of top mobile app designers is here to help assist you with every step of your mobile app development strategy. We consult, brainstorm, manage the project, design, develop, test, launch, and market apps in the best possible way.

“You can get in touch with our team to discuss further your concept to bring into reality. The discussion would help you to gain a better insight of your app requirement.”